How Mao Taught Children To Turn On Their Parents

Can you name the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century? No, it wasn’t Hitler or Stalin. It was Mao Zedong.

An estimated 65 million Chinese died in the 1960's as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with -- by execution, imprisonment or forced famine.

And who helped Mao the most in his quest to find those who stood in his way? Chinese children who turned in their own parents and relatives. The Communist indoctrination of children at America's liberal schools is not harmless - it is by design. Hitler youth and Mao's Red Guard were trained and brainwashed in the same way - to destroy their own parents and families on behalf of the Communist regime.

Mao proclaimed his Cultural Revolution on August 18, 1966 and the 72-year-old Chinese leader called male and female students to assemble on Beijing's Square of Heavenly Peace to launch his Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of youth waved Mao's little red book and cheered the old man. Gangs of Red Guards -- young men and women between 14 and 21 -- roamed the cities targeting revisionists, their families, and other enemies of the state, especially teachers.

Friends, neighbors, colleagues and families turned upon each other. Cultural treasures were destroyed. Children were encouraged to denounce their parents, so as to 'draw a line' between them and the enemy. It was the only way to save themselves.

Professors were dressed in grotesque clothes and dunce caps, their faces smeared with ink. They were then forced to get down on all fours and bark like dogs. Some were beaten to death, some even eaten -- all for the promulgation of Maoism. A reluctant Mao finally called in the Red Army to put down the marauding Red Guards when they began attacking Communist Party members, but not before 1 million Chinese died.

All the while, Mao kept expanding the laogai, a system of 1,000 forced labor camps throughout China. Harry Wu, who spent 19 years in labor camps, has estimated that from the 1950s through the 1980s, 50 million Chinese passed through the Chinese version of the Soviet gulag. Twenty million died as a result of the primitive living conditions and 14-hour work days.

Mao ordered the collectivization of China’s agriculture under the ironic slogan, the “Great Leap Forward.” A deadly combination of lies about grain production, disastrous farming methods and misdistribution of food produced the worse famine in human history.

Deaths from hunger reached more than 50 percent in some Chinese villages. The total number of dead from 1959 to 1961 was between 30 million and 40 million -- the population of California.

And yet Mao Zedong remains the most honored figure in the Chinese Communist Party. At one end of historic Tiananmen Square is Mao’s mausoleum, visited daily by large, respectful crowds. At the other end of the square is a giant portrait of Mao above the entrance to the Forbidden City, the favorite site of visitors, Chinese and foreign.

In the spirit of Mao, China’s present rulers continue to oppress intellectuals and other dissidents such as human-rights activist Liu Xiaobo. He was sentenced last month to 11 years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” His offense: signing Charter 08, which calls on the government to respect basic civil and human rights within a democratic framework.

Don't tell me Communist China is no threat to America. Don't tell me the Communist indoctrination of America's youth on liberal campuses is funny or benign. We've seen this movie before and it does not end well.